Pono Player detailed at SXSW

Neil Young details his high-quality portable music player

Neil Young has announced at South by Southwest (SXSW) that he will soon open pre-orders for his portable music player.

The PonoPlayer has been designed to give listeners the ability to “experience music the way the artists intended”, according to Young.

Pre-orders for the device will start on Kickstarter from March 15th. Young revealed that the player will be priced at $399. There is no UK specific pricing, meaning you'll pay around £240 give or take depending on exchange rates.

The player is designed to be used with the upcoming online ponomusic.com service. It has been described by the company as offering “the finest quality, highest-resolution digital music from both major labels and prominent independent labels”.

The first version of the player will ship with a 128GB hard drive. According to PonoMusic, that should be enough to store between 100 and 500 albums of studio quality music.

According to the company, users will also be able to increase the amount of storage in the device by inserting a memory card. It has not yet said which type of memory card it will take, but it's probably a safe bet to say it will be microSD.

As for the design, it will come with an LCD touchscreen and three physical buttons.

Young first spoke about the Pono in 2013. The musician has long complained about the quality of music on many iPods and rival music players.